Jewish Peace News (JPN) is an information service that circulates news clippings, analyses, editorial commentary, and action alerts concerning the Israel / Palestine conflict. We work to promote a just resolution to the conflict; we believe that the cause of both peace and justice will be served when Israel ends the occupation, withdrawing completely from the Palestinian territories and finding a solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis within the framework of international law.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

I'm enclosing a few of the better articles describing and providing analysis for the mass murders in Norway, as well as to the reactions to them in the US.The last link below describes some of the reactions in Israel.An outstanding feature of reactions everywhere has been the tendency to blame Muslims, even before any actual information was available. Then, once it was known that the murderer was a white Christian, many still insisted that this, too, was somehow (at least in part) the fault of Muslims. Additional interesting characteristic of much of mainstream commentary is the wish to use the terms 'terrorist'/'terrorism' exclusively to acts performed by Muslims - another symptoms of deeply internalized racism.

Two weeks after the fatal terrorist attacks of July 7, 2005, in London, and one day after another failed attack, a student, Jean Charles de Menezes, was in the London Underground when plainclothes police officers gave chase and shot him seven times in the head.

Initial eyewitness reports said he was wearing a suspiciously large puffa jacket on a hot day and had vaulted the barriers and run when asked to stop. Anthony Larkin, who was on the train, said he saw "this guy who appeared to have a bomb belt and wires coming out." Mark Whitby, who was also at the station, thought he saw a Pakistani terrorist being chased and gunned down by plainclothes policemen. Less than a month later, Whitby said, "I now believe that I could have been looking at the surveillance officer" being thrown out of the way as Menezes was being killed.

The Pakistani turned out to be a Brazilian. Security cameras showed he was wearing a light denim jacket and clearly in no rush as he picked up a free paper and swiped his metrocard.

"The way we see things is affected by what we know and what we believe," wrote John Berger in Ways of Seeing. "The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled."

When some Western commentators see a terrorist attack they are apparently far more comfortable with what they believe than what they know.

So it was on Friday when news emerged of the appalling attacks in Norway that have left an estimated seventy-six dead and a nation traumatized. Rupert Murdoch's Sun in Britain (the bestselling daily newspaper) ran with the headline "Al Qaeda massacre: Norway's 9/11." The Weekly Standard insisted: "We don't know if al Qaeda was directly responsible for today's events, but in all likelihood the attack was launched by part of the jihadist hydra." Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post then claimed: "This is a sobering reminder for those who think it's too expensive to wage a war against jihadists."

In just a few hours an entire conceptual framework had been erected—though hardly from scratch—to discuss the problem of Muslims in particular and non-white immigration in Europe in general and the existential threat these problems pose to civilization as we know it.

Then came the fact that the terrorist was actually a white, fundamentalist Christian and a neo-Nazi, Anders Breivik, raging against Islam and multiculturalism. Unlike Muslims in the wake of Islamist attacks, Christians weren't called upon to insist upon their moderation. No one argued that white people had to get with the Enlightenment project. But the bombings—and the presumptions about who was responsible—suggest that the true threat to European democracy is not Islam or Muslims but, once again, fascism and racists.

The belief that Muslims must have been involved chimes easily with a distorted, hysterical understanding of the demographic, religious and racial dynamics that have been present in Europe for well over a generation, variants of which are also at work in the United States today.

The general framing goes like this. Europe is being overrun by Muslims and other non-white immigrants, who are outbreeding non-Muslims at a terrifying rate. Unwilling to integrate culturally and unable to compete intellectually, Muslim populations have become hotbeds of terrorist sympathy and activity. Their presence threatens not only security but the liberal consensus regarding women's rights and gay rights that Western Europe has so painstakingly established; and overall, this state of affairs represents a fracturing of society that is losing its common values. This has been allowed to happen in the name of not offending specific ethnic groups, otherwise known as multiculturalism.

One could spend all day ripping these arguments to shreds, but for now let's just deal with the facts.

There have been predictions that the Muslim population of Europe will almost double by 2015 (Oner Taspiner, the Brookings Institution); double by 2020 (Don Melvin, the Associated Press); and be 20 percent of the continent by 2050 (Esther Pan, Council on Foreign Relations). Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum told Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches: "The number I heard is every 32 years the population, the European population of Europe will be reduced by 50 percent. That's how bad their birthrates are. This is in many respects a dying continent from the standpoint of European-Europeans."

This is nonsense. The projections are way off. While Muslims in Europe do have higher birthrates than non-Muslims, their birthrates are falling. A Pew Forum study, published in January 2011, forecast an increase of Muslims in European population from 6 percent in 2010 to 8 percent in 2030.

The Norwegian terrorist Breivik feared a Muslim takeover. But Muslims make up 3 percent of Norway. Black Americans have a greater presence in Alaska.

But even if these predictions were true, so what? There's nothing to say Europe has to remain Christian or majority-white.

Nor do immigrants struggle to integrate. In Britain, Asian Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus all marry outside of their own groups at the same rates as whites. For most ethnic minorities in Britain, roughly half or more of their friends are white. Only 20 percent of those born in Britain have friends only from their own group. According to a Pew Research Center survey, the principal concerns of Muslims in France, Germany and Spain are unemployment and Islamic extremism.

In most of Europe the official politics of multiculturalism that the likes of Breivik and more mainstream politicians rail against—a liberal, state-led policy of encouraging and supporting cultural difference at the expense of national cohesion—is an absolute fiction. Last year German chancellor Angela Merkel claimed the "multikulti" experiment had failed. Earlier this year, British Prime Minister David Cameron said the same thing. The truth is that neither country ever tried such an experiment. "We never had a policy of multiculturalism," explains Mekonnen Mesghena, head of migration and intercultural management at the Heinrich Böll Foundation. "We had a policy of denial: denial of immigration and of diversity. Now it's like we are waking up from a long trance."

The real object of their ire is the existence of "other"—meaning non-white—cultures and races in Europe: the fact of "other" cultures, not the promotion of them. The single greatest obstacle to integration in most of Europe is not Islam or multiculturalism but racism and the economic and academic disadvantage that comes with it.

And, finally, Muslims are nowhere near the greatest terrorist threat. According to Europol, between 2006 and 2008 only .4 percent of terrorist plots (including attempts and fully executed attacks) in Europe were from Islamists. The lion's share (85 percent) were related to separatism. That doesn't mean there isn't a problem. But it's not on the scale or of the nature that those first out of the gate on Friday claimed it was. Put bluntly, if you have to assume anything when a bomb goes off in Europe, think region, not religion.

But there are some in Europe who are struggling to cope with the changes taking place—who are failing to integrate into changing societies and who harbor deep-seated resentments against their fellow citizens. That is a sizeable and growing section of the white population so alienated that it has once again made fascism a mainstream ideology on the continent.

In Germany the bestselling book since the Second World War by former Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin blames inbreeding among Turks and Kurds for "congenital disabilities" and argues that immigrants from the Middle East are a "genetic minus" for the country. "But the subject is usually hushed up," he wrote. "Perish the thought that genetic factors could be partially responsible for the failure of parts of the Turkish populations in the German school system."

A poll published in the national magazine Focus in September 2010 showed 31 percent of respondents agreeing that Germany is "becoming dumber" because of immigrants; 62 percent said Sarrazin's comments were "justified". In Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France and Italy, hard-right nationalist and anti-immigrant parties regularly receive more than 10 percent of the vote. In Finland it is 19 percent; in Norway it is 22 percent; in Switzerland, 29 percent. In Italy and Austria they have been in government; in Switzerland, where the anti-immigrant Swiss People's Party is the largest party, they still are.

Breivik was from a particularly vile strain of that trend. But he did not come from nowhere. And the anxieties that produced him are growing. Fascists prey on economic deprivation and uncertainty, democratic deficits cause by European Union membership and issues of sovereignty related to globalization. Far right forces in Greece, for example, are currently enjoying a vigorous revival. When scapegoats are needed they provide them. When solutions are demanded they are scarce.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

There are good things to be said about Professor Naomi Chazan, a scholar of contemporary Africa and a former member of the Israeli Knesset (on behalf of the center-left Meretz party). When an extreme right-wing and US funded Israeli student group like "Im Tirtzu" runs a venomous campaign against her, smearing her (in the Israeli public eye) as "Naomi Goldstone-Chazan", it is safe to assume she has been getting some things right. Indeed, signing a petition in demand of an "immediate halt to the attack carried out in Gaza by Israeli forces", just one day after Israel began its "Operation Cast Lead" war on Gaza's inhabitants in December 2008, was not a consensus act in her rather mainstream political circles. Prof. Chazan is also the president of the New Israel Fund (NIF). This self-proclaimed "leading organization committed to equality and democracy for all Israelis" has supported, through funding and consultation, numerous Israeli NGOs whose goals are to promote the rights of various minorities and disenfranchised groups in Israel. In view of all this, local peace activists held high expectations ahead of Prof. Chazan's recent series of talks in Australia on behalf of NIF. Alas, her message to the Australian public and the local Jewish community was a bitter disappointment to many concerned Australians. In spite of NIF's credentials, many grassroots activists for the Palestinian cause have come to regard the fund as a significant part of the problem, and not just a part of the solution. All this is illustrated by Samah Sabawi's lucid critique, which follows. One of NIF's main efforts in the past year has been an aggressive campaign against the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) initiative. Started in 2005 by Palestinian civil society, BDS has already proven effective at several levels. So why does NIF oppose the BDS initiative? Surely this has a lot to do with the views held by its liberal Zionist donors, who tend to be hostile towards attempts to pressure Israel from the outside. NIF could have reached a compromise between the desires of its donors and the urgent need to effectively address the reality of Israel's apartheid and occupation policies by opting for agnosticism on the issue of BDS. Instead of doing so, the fund has attempted to derail significant BDS initiatives. Moreover, it has campaigned against proposed measures that were extremely selective and restricted in scope. A primary example would be the fund's appeal to the University of California at Berkeley, against divestment from two American companies, General Electric and United Technologies, companies that sell Israel military equipment which is used in occupied Palestinian territory to sustain Israel's occupation and land grab policies (for the anti-divestment declaration co-signed by NIF: http://jstreet.org/blog/troubling-uc-berkeley-student-senate-bill-on-israel/). On top of its Berkeley anti-divestment campaign, NIF has announced recently that it would no longer allow its payment transfer mechanism to be used by US donors who wish to support the Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP), a vibrant women's rights and anti-occupation NGO. The decision was made due to CWP's support of the BDS campaign. On Monday, the Knesset passed the 'anti-boycott' bill which renders boycott advocacy a tort. Peace Now, an Israeli group which is always willing to cater to the Israeli mainstream, has in defiance of the new law announced that it would promote a boycott of settlement products. So what is one to make of NIF's staunch defense of the American arms industries? Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa (who is also a Conservative, Pro-American politician) once stated, during a visit to Israel, that "only the dissidents will save Israel". Whether one is interested in saving Israel, saving Palestine, or just saving human lives and dignity, one has to ask which actions can bring about a change in Israel's policies, and which Israelis are true dissidents. It seems clear that Israeli governments will not be swayed by Israeli NGOs that, by their very nature, can cover only a narrow segment of the activism spectrum. It is evident that Israeli decision makers can be swayed by boycott, divestment and sanctions initiatives. If the New Israel Fund lacks the moral backbone to support such initiatives, it should refrain from undermining the attempts of dedicated human rights activists in Israel, Palestine and the entire world. Ofer Neiman A Palestinian woman's response to Israel's Naomi Chazan on BDS by Samah Sabawi Public Advocate Australians for Palestine Naomi Chazan, the President of the New Israel Fund (NIF) gave a talk in Marrickville NSW during her recent Australian tour offering a critique of the Palestinian Civil Society call for Boycotts Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Although she presented herself as a veteran Israeli peace activist, Chazan's mission here in Australia was ostensibly to promote NIF. This is important because everything she said about BDS must be understood within the context of her mission – to gather funds and support and to convince Jews in Australia of the need to continue to invest in Israel through NIF. This clear conflict of interest makes Chazan's criticism of BDS far less credible. Chazan named six reasons why she believed BDS was harmful. BDS is not effective because Israel has a very strong economy: South Africa's economy was also booming when the boycott movement against that regime began in the late 1950s. Decades later the movement succeeded in bringing down the South African apartheid regime. Many Israeli leaders, including Ehud Barak, Ben-Eliezer, Shimon Peres and others, have already stated that BDS is a "strategic threat;" what they mean of course is that it is a serious threat to Israel's system of occupation, legalized racial discrimination (conforming to the UN definition of apartheid) and denial of refugee rights. We only need to look at the millions of dollars the Israeli lobby groups in Western nations including Australia are spending in efforts to "sabotage" the movement to know that it is indeed effective. The fact that Chazan focused so much on BDS in her Marrickville talk confirms this. There is other evidence of BDS's effectiveness. The Deutsche Bahn withdrawal from the Israeli rail project connecting Tel Aviv with Jerusalem has been a watershed for the movement. It was the first time that a German government-owned company withdrew from an Israeli project over concerns of violation of international law. The French company Veolia's loss of billions of dollars worth of contracts because of its involvement in the illegal Jerusalem Light Rail project also points to the impressive success of BDS campaigning, especially in Europe. The fast growing list of superstars and prominent music bands heeding the boycott of Israel makes Tel Aviv look very similar to the South African resort of Sun City under apartheid. That city was a key target for the cultural boycott then. The University of Johannesburg's severance of ties with Ben Gurion University over the latter's complicity in violating Palestinian rights is the most concrete victory to date for the academic boycott campaign. And, there has been sweeping trade union support for BDS in the UK, Brazil, Ireland, South Africa, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Norway, Belgium, India, Turkey, and elsewhere. BDS undermines the existence of the state of Israel: The demands are clear - full equality in Israel for the Palestinian citizens of the state, an end to occupation and a fulfilment of Israel's obligation towards the refugees. If these demands threaten to bring an end to Israel's "existence, we have to ask what does this really say about Israel? A state that is truly democratic and built on the foundations of justice and equality would not be threatened by demands of equality and an end to occupation. Boycotts did not bring an end to South Africa's existence, they did not destroy it, and they certainly did not "delegitimize" whites: they only destroyed South Africa's system of injustice, inequality and racial discrimination. BDS is actually "a code word for one state solution" which defies the right of Israelis and Jews to self-determination: BDS does not aim for either a one or two state solution, but for Palestinian rights. One of those rights is for Palestinians to be free in their own land without the yoke of Israeli occupation and system of racial discrimination. Whether that is in one state for both peoples or two sovereign, democratic states side by side has yet to be decided. The movement is consistently neutral on this, regardless of the diverse personal political views held by its various spokespeople. BDS is counter-productive because it entrenches the victim mentality of those in Israel who believe the whole world is against them which inevitably strengthens the right wing in Israel while weakening the left: Right now, the fanatical right is taking over the entire Israeli society, but once boycotts begin hurting Israel's carefully nurtured public image, dissenting voices will become much more vocal, as happened in South Africa. Then, the current consensus in support of apartheid and colonial rule will crack. BDS is against academic freedom and singles out Israeli academics: Chazan is purposely misleading in this regard. As any relatively well-informed observer must know after seven years of the Palestinian academic boycott campaign and hundreds of articles written on it, the academic boycott is institutional in nature and has therefore never targeted individual Israeli academics. BDS has consistently been directed at academic institutions because of their persistent and grave complicity in planning, implementing and justifying Israel's violations of international law. Chazan's claims that Israeli academics are progressive and opposed to the occupation have absolutely no foundation. In 2008, a petition drafted by four Jewish-Israeli academics calling on the Israeli army to allow access at checkpoints to Palestinian academics and students to reach their educational institutions was distributed to all 9,000 Israeli academics in the hope that most would sign this minimal expression of respect for academic freedom: only 407 out of 9,000 academic actually did so. BDS singles Israel out: This criticism is so often tendered that one has to ask whether Chazan and others posing it want more action on other causes or silence on the Palestinian cause. In any case, people are rising up against tyrannical regimes and seeking change in just about every Arab state in "Israel's neighbourhood." Some of these governments are now being subject to international sanctions, so why not Israel which has for decades defied the UN and violated international law? An equally important question to ask here is why not advocate for Palestinian rights? Indeed, why are Palestinians being singled out as the only people who cannot be championed? We can speak out for all other issues, so it is tendentious to suggest that speaking up for Palestinian rights singles Israel out unfairly. The principled Israeli left camp which respects equal rights for all, the UN-sanctioned rights of Palestinian refugees, and an end to colonial oppression should – and indeed does -- invest its time challenging its government's apartheid policies and oppression of the Palestinians rather than criticising the Palestinian non-violent resistance model that encompasses BDS. Chazan's efforts to undermine BDS need to be seen in context. At the end of the day, Chazan will go home to Israel where she is a privileged Jewish citizen with all her rights intact. She is part of and an enabler of the establishment that denies Palestinians their basic rights and freedoms, and as such, she is not in a position to be dictating to the Palestinians their methods of struggle or acting as gatekeeper for the international solidarity movements, preaching to them what is allowed and what is not in standing with the Palestinians. As in every human struggle for freedom, justice and equality, that right is the prerogative of those who live behind the walls, hindered by checkpoints and held captive to siege and military oppression. Samah Sabawi is the Public Advocate of the Australian advocacy group Australians for Palestine.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

On July 15 Palestinians will be marching throughout the West Bank to mobilize in support of the campaign to ask the UN to recognize the state of Palestine. Israelis will be supporting them by organizing solidarity marches – not marches to demand the resumption of negotiations, which have no chance of success with the present Israeli government in office (and very little chance with any government that can be elected in Israel in the foreseeable future). The call to the demonstration (first item) deploys language not typically used by the rather tired Israeli "peace movement." Instead of "concessions" to the Palestinians which are necessary to secure the future of a democratic Israel, "Support for Palestine's independence means committing to the Palestinians in their initiative and their struggle." This language goes beyond the dead-end one-state/two-state debate and emphasizes justice and equality on the basis of solidarity. Yishay Rosen-Tzvi's article inHa-Aretz (second item), uses the word "Zionism." But he is also clear that, "This land and its peoples have no future without cooperation." Cooperation, equality, and integration. What American ideals! Why are the Obama administration and the US Congress pathologically phobic about them when it comes to Israel/Palestine? [Joel Beinin]

"Unilateral steps are not constructive. I don't think that an attempt to coerce things outside of direct negotiations will bring peace…. If anyone wants to do anything positive it must be to push for direct negotiations." (Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Haaretz, 16 June 2011)

"This is an insoluble conflict because it is not about territory… Until Abu Mazen recognizes Israel as a Jewish State, there will be no way to reach an agreement." (Netanyahu, Haaretz, 15 June 2011)

We can talk all we want about unilateralism and political processes, but we can no longer avoid a decision. Today it is clear that genuine negotiation is not going to happen under the current government. Even if the Europeans and the Americans drag Bibi to another round of talks, there will be no outcome. For a long time now, negotiations have been nothing more than yet another means of perpetuating occupation. There is no choice for anyone advocating for an end Israeli control over the Palestinians other than supporting the only realistic way left to achieve this goal: recognition of an independent Palestinian state.Applying to the United Nations for such recognition is not merely the Palestinian people's right, it is the sole remaining constructive step for countering unending negotiation and the threat of increased violence. As Israelis who support the Palestinian struggle for independence, it is our duty to express our backing for the Palestinian initiative. We can go on calling for "Two States for Two Peoples" and repeating that the occupation must end, but Bibi and Lieberman are [chattering] the same things.

Sure we can go on marching in Jewish Tel Aviv under tired slogans until Jerusalem no longer has a future. But another choice is to unflinchingly fix our gaze on reality and understand that there is only one political decision to be taken: are we for Palestinian independence or not? In the current reality, support for Palestinian independence can no longer be interpreted as a call for the government to enter into negotiations known in advance to be dead-end, or as encouragement to a right-wing government to "take an initiative". Whoever feels with, but accepts going without, is, in a final analysis, naked. Support for Palestine's independence means committing to the Palestinians in their initiative and their struggle, not reinforcing Israeli intractability and speechifying about negotiations and political processes.

On July 15 we will stand with our Palestinian partners in a Palestinian-Israeli march through the heart of Jerusalem for the independence of Palestine -because the Palestinians also deserve to be "a people, free in their country". Because Jerusalem is the place for this freedom to be realizedand because Jewish-Arab solidarity is the only response to hatred and racismWe will march together in both sections of the city, the Israeli and the Palestinian, to express our support of Palestine's independence and our commitment to fight for it together

Not Masters and not Culprits, but Partners Instead / By Ishay Rosen-ZviHa-Aretz, July 7, 2008

On July 15th, an unprecedented event in the history of Zionism is set to take place in Jerusalem: a Jewish-Palestinian independence march. This march will not be yet another demonstration in support of the negotiations; not a call for an end to violence nor for a bilateral two-state solution. We've had enough of those. This time Israelis, Jews and Arabs, will show our support for the unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence expected in September; a free state in the 1967 borders, with its capital in East Jerusalem. No more favors, thank you very much.

This way is unequivocally better than yet another statement of support in negotiations, which in turn is nothing more than the continuation of the occupation by other means, that of negotiations without end. At the same time, we must ask what the role of the Jewish marchers is in this march. Is not the Palestinian state a Palestinian project? Is it not our role to just stand back and not interfere? Is it not better that we fight against the occupation, and leave the founding of the state to those whose state it will be? Is it not just slightly offensive? Hast thou conquered, and also rejoiced?

We claim that the illusion that the end of the occupation will bring with it a separation from the Palestinians is the root of all evil. What lies behind the various "disengagement plans", especially the greedy "separation wall", if not the desire "not to see them anymore?" This land and its peoples have no future without cooperation. Not just because the oppressor will be free only when the oppressed will be free (as Hegel well understood in his master and slave dialectic), but also because after their respective freedoms, the two sides are destined to sit together, to share a land, its resources and history. Solutions based upon separation (always unilateral), are bound to fail (see under: Gaza).

Moreover, we are trying to undermine the most successful lie in the history of the Israeli public sphere, that which presents everything as a zero-sum game, as if every Palestinian gain is an Israeli loss. We are marching to say that the Palestinian declaration of independence is not just a theatre of conflict between Israel and Palestine, but first and foremost a discussion Israelis should be holding amongst ourselves. Similar deliberations should have taken place before the wars of choice in Lebanon and Gaza, and should now be held apropos the Gaza flotilla. The fact that we cannot hear even the slightest echo of such a discussion teaches us more than anything else about the total and unequivocal surrender of the Israeli media to official government policy. For exposing an internal disagreement will undermine the binary illusion, that of us against them, and might even begin to deter the Obama administration's intention to veto the declaration in the UN security Council ( the UShas no power of veto in the general assembly) as a way of defending Israeli interests. One can dream, at least.

But all of these are just icing on the cake. And the "cake" is the solidarity itself. We do not come to the march "from above," as masters, and not "from below," as culprits. Rather, we come as partners in the desire for freedom. Against the fascist marches which washed over the city on Jerusalem Day, against the ethnic politics, becoming ever more violent, the marchers are attempting to make room for an alternative politics, one based on civil partnership, on amicability, on common, worldly interests. This then is the reason that the initiative comes from an organization whose very existence is based on solidarity, civic and human. This is why the real goal is not only political or a matter of publicity. Indeed it is nothing less than the shattering of the dichotomist model through which the entire Israeli political apparatus operates: "us" against "them." Those who yearn for independence in this space are not "them;" they do not belong to the other s ide. Theyare our very own poor. And, as the Talmud teaches us, our own poor come first.

Ishay Rosen-Zvi is professor of Talmudic Studies in Tel Aviv university and a research fellow in the "Shalom Hartman" Institute.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

As many of you may know by now, the US Boat to Gaza - named The Audacity of Hope - has been stopped from sailing by the Greek authorities.It's doubtful that any of the ship in the second Gaza flotilla will get to leave port and sail to their desired destination.This youtube clip - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9s7JuEceN -captures so eloquently what all this effort is about.

A second youtube clip consists of an interview with journalist Max blumenthal. The interviewer is Sam Seder, and it's on a program called "The Majority Report"the interview covers the situation on the ground right now regarding the American boat; Israel's smear campaign against flotilla 2, and other related issues.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pptawaC_hoU&feature=share

And here is an action alert that just came in a little while ago:

ACTION ALERT UPDATE: 8 American members of Freedom Flotilla have been ARRESTED while Hunger Striking in front of US Embassy!by US BOAT TO GAZA on Sunday, July 3, 2011 at 3:14pmJuly 3, 2011

The 8 people who were fasting in front of the U.S. Embassy have been arrested. They are Ken Mayers, Carol Murry, Medea Benjamin, Paki Wieland, Ray McGovern, Brad Taylor, Kit Kitteridge and Kathy Kelly.

Let's keep the pressure on Washington. They need to pressure the Greek government to release our captain, our boat and now these 8 people as well! Let them sail to Gaza!!

Here are some other numbers and email addresses to try:State Department general number: 202-647-4000 - ask for the Overseas U.S. Citizen Services Duty Officer and you'll get a live State Dept. official who has to hear you out.The voicemail for Kim Richter - also at the State Dept. - says she's out of the office for several days, and that callers with urgent issues should contact a colleague at 202-647-4578.You can email the U.S. Embassy in Athens at: athensamemb@state.gov or you can send an email to them at: athensamericancitizenservices@state.govIf you can place an international phone call, the number for the U.S. Embassy in Athens is 011-30-210-721-2951.

Please also try to call, fax or email your members of Congress as well.